


saddlesore

by mortalitasi



Series: hil do lok [3]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/M, General, Humor, frost is also an important character who needs appreciation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 14:30:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13215759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: Alduin and the Dragonborn have very different opinions on how transportation should be handled.





	saddlesore

"I will not say it again. Get _on the horse_."  
  
"No."  
  
They've been standing here, on the outskirts of Rorikstead, for the better part of a quarter of an hour, with the wildflowers rustling around their feet and the chill wind coming down from the sides of the mountain stirring their cloaks and the hair streaming out over her shoulders. Her nose is ready to fall off—and she's certain her ears are close behind—she hasn't eaten in the last two hours, he is trying her patience, and the fact that they haven't moved so much as an inch in the past fifteen minutes is enough to stoke the fire of her ire so high she is willing to use rope to help her achieve what she wants.  
  
Frost snorts and tosses his head, his mane fluttering with the movement, his great breaths escaping from velvet nostrils in large plumes of swirling white. Almost dragon-like. But far more amenable, and much less determined to kill her. He drives a hoof into the soft ground and shifts impatiently, his tack clinking with the movement. He has been stabled at Rorikstead since she went up the mountain with the intent of reaching Sovngarde, and it is no surprise he is eager to get going. Frost is a traveler's horse, well-walked and surefooted, as useful in a fight as he is carrying a journeyman's burden: patience has not been bred into him.  
  
And neither has it been in her, it seems, for she finds what little remnants she has of the precious virtue are dying, and quickly.  
  
He speaks to her between gritted teeth, the proud set of his jaw so tight she thinks it might shatter if he clenches it anymore. "I am not a pack to be carried."  
  
"You must have floated down from the Monahven, then," she says airily, watching his eyes flash with what's undoubtedly completely and utterly undiluted hatred. Making friends always has been one of her strengths.  
  
"You will _watch your tongue_ ," he says, and there's a rumble in his voice that is reminiscent of the Thu'um. He seems to forget she's quite capable of shouting—and Shouting—back.  
  
"And you will get on the bloody horse before I tire of your protesting and decide to tie you to the saddle instead," she snaps back, her gloved hands tightening around Frost's reins.  
  
"You wouldn't dare," he returns. She's sure if he had spines, he would be bristling.  
  
"Don't test me," she warns him, taking a step forward. The frost crunches underfoot.  
  
He draws himself up straighter, as though his height will intimidate her, and crosses his arms across his chest. Well, at least he's learned a thing or two about expression beyond trying to strangle her to convey his annoyance. She'd gotten rather tired of that stage. His red eyes almost glow with the intensity of the glare he sends her under the rim of the hood she'd ordered him to pull up over his head—mountain folk were already superstitious of the friend with supposedly horrific malady of the skin she'd brought down from the mountain but never went up with.  
  
She doesn't want to find out how they'd react to a creature more dragon than human that had the horns to match. Any amateur scholar could look at him and know he was no dremora or kin of the planes, but the people concerned are fishwives that dabble in magic for "protection" and woodsmen more happy with swinging their axes first and asking questions later—that is, if they asked at all.  
  
The dragon-man scowls, teeth and all, and speaks slowly. Deliberately. As though she's too stupid to take it all in faster.  
  
"There is no force on Nirn or any of the sixteen hell-blasted planes that could make me sit this mortal, baser beast."  
  
"Oh, really?"

 

* * *

   
  
It turns out there was such a force to be had, and it is sitting in front of him with the reins in her hands.  
  
She hasn't spoken a word since she clipped him to the horse's saddlebag without warning, in the time enough for barely a blink of an eye, and threatened to let Frost drag him whatever distance it took to change his mind. Alduin has known many liars in his time, some great, some cowardly, some appearing brave without fault, and she is none of them: or she is, and he cannot tell. He has yet to decide which is worse. But there was no lie in her face when she talked of having the horse pull him down the mountainside. There is not even a speck of doubt that had he allowed her, she would have done it.  
  
Is this what he has been reduced to? A creature of weak willing to be fussed and moved by the whims of one not even fully dov-blooded?  
  
The voice of reason in him pipes up and above the clamor of his wounded pride, saying, there is a difference between being needlessly imperious and knowing when the odds are firmly skewed in the opponent's favor. And for now, he has to admit, they are. She has been walking and running and fighting on two legs for the better part of her life—he has barely spent two fortnights in the same way, and though he is progressing quickly (freakishly fast, if her reactions are anything to go by), it is not as swift as he would wish it to be.  
  
He can only scowl at the slow-moving scenery around them, the trees that which haven't lost their leaves wearing either coats of evergreen or brilliant variations on russet, burned yellow and orange, brown and faded ochre. Every living thing seems a giant of its own now. He has never seen the trees so close before—too busy soaring over them was what he had been, but without wings that will be difficult to do again. The thought makes a wave of longing swell in his chest.  
  
"Did I spell your tongue, or are you just planning my untimely demise?"  
  
The Dragonborn's voice is an intrusion, unwelcome or not, and he's suddenly very aware of where he is instead of where he could be, and that is on the back of a horse with his arms around the waist of a very testy bosmer whose hair is far too long to be acceptable. She turns her head so as to look at him out of the corner of her eye, the point of her slightly-upturned nose outlined in sharp relief against the pale mane of the horse.  
  
"If I were indeed planning your _untimely demise_ , it wouldn't be so obvious that you should be able to guess at it," he says, looking anywhere but straight ahead.  
  
She snorts. "Barely two-dozen days old and you're already rebelling," she says with a sigh.  
  
"I am dov," he states, haughty, as though that is the answer to everything ever. "Mastery of all is in our blood. And I have lived for far longer than _two-dozen days_."  
  
She laughs shortly, the sound unexpectedly bright and loud on the tree-lined path shrouded in autumn colors. "Not in my world."  
  
He doesn't want to hear more, so he ceases talking, and the Dragonborn does, too.

They find the arrangement suits them quite nicely.


End file.
